From US NWR/Reuters:
“25 Years
After Peace Deal, Bosnia Endures Division and Stagnation”
(Aerial view of
the city Brcko, Bosnia and Herzegovina November 17, 2020. Picture taken
November 17, 2020.)
- Mirsad
Zahirovic is a university-educated journalist and activist who moonlights as a
waiter because he is not a member of one of the ruling political parties, which
is almost the only way to get a job in his native Bosnia. The 28-year-old
belongs to "the children of Dayton", a generation named after the
peace agreement signed 25 years ago at a U.S. air force base in Dayton, Ohio.
The accord ended three-and-a-half years of ethnic warfare in Bosnia that killed
100,000 people and forced 2 million from their homes. Zahirovic, who has made a
documentary film about the Dayton generation, doesn't see much benefit from
those 25 years of peace. "The only good thing from Dayton is that it
stopped the war," he said.
Bosnia is
marking the 25th anniversary of Dayton on Saturday without much fanfare,
politically polarised as ethnic rivals squabble over whether to leave the
settlement as it is or revise the constitution, which is part of the accords. The
U.S.-brokered peace deal ended hostilities between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks
(Bosnian Muslims) by splitting the country into two ethnically divided
entities, linked via a weak central government.
NEUTRAL
DISTRICT Several years later, the northern town of Brcko was declared a
neutral district outside the jurisdiction of the two regions, and was hailed as
Bosnia's biggest success as refugees from all ethnic groups returned and the
economy blossomed. But after an initial burst of economic growth
following Dayton, Bosnia has stagnated as investors began to avoid a country
held back by red tape and corruption. Bosnia has for years been at the bottom
of the Transparency International corruption index, its score steadily dropping
since 2012. There has also been a massive exodus of young people -
Bosnia had the biggest brain drain in the world along with Haiti and Venezuela
in the 2018 Global Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum.
"The people here want hope," said U.S. Ambassador Eric Nelson.
"There is a (European Union) road map to the future and a strong support
for Bosnia-Herzegovina accomplishing that goal." "But actions
need to take place here, and that's going to require leaders to stop thinking
only of narrow political interests, ... and start thinking about long-term
progress of this country," Nelson said. The stagnation is visible in Brcko, where
few are optimistic about the future. "The situation is difficult,
nothing has changed since the war ended, political parties still produce the
same propaganda, there is no progress," said Jasmin Jukan, a Bosniak,
having his regular afternoon beer with a Serb neighbour.
^ My Dad was a
Peacekeeper in Croatia and Bosnia right after the Dayton Peace Accords. My Mom
and I visited Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro in 2010. We found the people in
all three countries to be very friendly and helpful – even if they couldn’t
speak English. We even went to Mostar, Bosnia which is still segregated between
Bosniaks and Croatians. They go to the same school building, but are separated
and are taught their own history, culture and all the other subjects in their own
language: Croatian or Bosnian in the Latin Alphabet (which is the same basic
language that is understand by everyone.) When I needed help carrying a broken
wheelchair over uneven cobble stones from the Mostar Bridge random
strangers- I don’t know if they were Bosnian
Croatians or Bosniaks – came and helped carry it wherever we needed to go with
no questions asked and no money given. I did say “Thank You” in Bosnian
(Hvala), in Croatian Hvala) and in Serbian (Хвала in Cyrillic Serbian and Hvala
in Latin Serbian) just to be sure I didn't offend anyone (as well as in English, German and French for
good measure.) I have never gone through a war personally and so will never
fully understand what it does to those who live through it, but it does seem
that 25 years after the Wars in the different parts of the former Yugoslavia
ended things could change for the better with more integration or at least more
acceptance. ^
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